Legs Are No Help to Me

Nurse Collins is looking even more sheepish than usual. She asks if the office is warm enough, whether I’d like a cup of coffee and how my morning’s going so far, and I know there’s something she doesn’t want to tell me. Something upsetting. Most likely another one of the boys has died. Or we’ve lost yet another surgeon. Or the enemy’s advanced another few yards. Nurse Collins hates delivering bad news. She’s always pussyfooting around it. If she can avoid the elephant in the room for the duration of her shift, it’ll be the next nurse on duty’s job to deal with the inevitable fall out when I finally hear the worst.

“Spit it out Collins,” I say. I have no patience left this morning. The enemy planes started at five and even though camp is six miles from the trenches, the noise was something shocking; I had no hope of getting back to sleep.

Nurse Collins fiddles with the cuff on her uniform sleeve. She keeps her eyes trained on the floor. It’s filthy down there. It always is. It’s impossible to keep the mud out in what is really a glorified tent. After a few seconds of nervous shuffling, the silly woman begins to speak. “I’m sorry doctor,” she says, “I know you’re desperate for arms this week, but the volunteers keep producing legs.”

This is worse than I’d expected. On the frontline you grow accustomed to death. And surgeons gone awol can be replaced. And the enemy line’s a fluid thing; ten feet lost today could be clawed back tomorrow. I could’ve coped with any of these and other revelation. But yet more legs is a real disaster. Every amputation performed this week has been at the shoulder, the elbow or wrist. All our boys are in need of arms. Nurse Collins knows this. It’s why she looks so terrified. The nurses are all scared of me. I’ve got, what they call, an explosive temper. There’s a joke which goes ‘round the mess hall every other week where my temper’s compared to a landmine, with the landmine emerging the more predictable of the two. I can feel a good roar coming on now. I’m going to take my rage out on Nurse Collins and afterwards deny all knowledge of it, though the canvas walls are reasonably thin and everyone in the vicinity of my office is likely to get the worst of it.

“Damn it, Nurse Collins,” I gulder, “legs are no help to me. It’s arms I need. Why aren’t they producing arms this week?”

Nurse Collins shrugs. She doesn’t know. Three weeks ago, when we needed legs the volunteers were producing arms by the dozen, so many arms most went to waste. They ended up in the incinerator. Of course, we didn’t tell the volunteers this. We didn’t want them to feel discouraged. They’re doing our boys a tremendous service lying around in bed all day, downing all the drugs I feed them, sprouting multiple extra limbs. They’re doing their bit for the war effort. I suppose you could argue their sacrifice is on a par with the lads who serve on the frontline. By the time they’ve donated their sixth or seventh extra limb the weight’s comparable to a whole body. They have quite literally sacrificed themselves.

The experiment’s been a success so far. There are soldiers heading back to Blighty walking on grafted legs, swinging their kit bags from donated arms. Young men who won’t face the future lopsided or resting on a crutch. You’ve got to call that a success of sorts. And yet it isn’t an exact science. The drugs are stimulating rapid cell production, limbs are growing where they wouldn’t usually grow. I just have to work out how to refine the process. If it’s to be of any real use, we must learn how to grow the limbs on demand.

Nurse Collins looks like she’s about to cry. She keeps saying she’s sorry over and over again. It’s not as if she’s personally failed me. If I was feeling benevolent I could say something to this effect. I don’t bother. I shout a bit more. I hurl a paperweight at the wall. I let her cry and apologise. It helps to see her so vulnerable.

I could break her in two if the inclination took me. It feels good to realise this. I get the same feeling every time I cut into an arm or leg. I am careful to tell my superiors it’s the grafting which gives me the greatest pleasure but there’s nothing quite like sinking a scalpel into another man’s flesh, all the time knowing that with the slightest flick of the wrist you could change the course of his life. Nice men are generous and giving. Strong men know it is better to take.  

Inspired by a line from Agatha Christie’s 1953 novel, A Pocket Full of Rye